SIGMA QUick Infrared Camera User Manual

Page 7

October 30, 1997

3.2

QCDCOM Setup and Operation

The qcdcom program should be run from the directory where you want your data to be written,
though this can be changed from within qcdcom using the

command. So execute the following

commands:

% cd /scr/data

(or wherever your data should go)

% qcdcom

When qcdcom is started, it initializes communications with the parallel interface, allocate memory
into which to read IR array images, and read enough from the DSP memory to get an idea of the
status of the DSP code. Qcdcom also initializes itself for readout size and binning parameters from
the numbers it reads from the DSP. Since qcdcom runs separately from the DSP computer and saves
its own parameters, qcdcom can be terminated and then restarted without disturbing the DSP.

At startup qcdcom prints a short message identifying the program, and display the filters installed
and the current filter and pupil position. It will also try establishing communication with the camera,
and will give a warning if it fails. If the camera has not been initialized after powerup, or if for some
other reason communications have failed, the DSP code will have to be downloaded to the camera.
This is done with the

command. You should do this at the beginning of your observing run to

make sure the correct code is running. The command to download the current standard DSP code is
the following:

df quirc

Occasionally the download will fail if the camera is in some undetermined state, and a reset will need
to be done. The DSP reset is a red button on the white controller box mounted on the dewar. Usually
pressing this once and waiting several seconds before retrying the download will work. Once the
download has completed, the

sync

command can be used to see if the camera communications are

OK. You can use the

sync

command at any time to verify that qcdcom and the DSP computer are

talking. Once the main DSP program has been downloaded with the

command, the utility board

program must be downloaded using the following command:

du util

This loads the code that performs the filter wheel and pupil motions.

Next you should set the way files will be named on the disk. Files are named using a prefix with the
frame number appended, thus you should set the prefix using the

command and reset the running

file number using the

command (typically to 1 when you start up). For example, to have files

named qrc.001, qrc.002, etc.:

> fp qrc.

> fn 1

Note you must specify a trailing dot in the file prefix if you want one.

You will also want to set the exposure parameters using

auto

at this time. Since you may inherit

parameters from the previous observer, you should make sure they are set to the default values, which
are correct for most observing. One easy way to do this is to use the

init

command described